A Stella Review: The Garden (Lavender Shores #2) by Rosalind Abel

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RATING 4,5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful Gilbert Bryant designs jewelry for the rich and famous, and he made his escape from his gossipy little hometown of Lavender Shores. However, with so many friends and family, he keeps getting pulled back. When he attends his best friend’s engagement party, Gilbert can’t help but sample one of the new men in town. It’s just some innocent—or not so innocent—fun. Nothing that will even cross his mind once he gets back to his everyday life.

Walden Thompson dreamed about living in Lavender Shores since he visited as a child. He finally gets his chance, and he embraces the opportunity to start over, to become someone new. He leaves both hurts and dangerous habits in the past, where they belong. When Gilbert crosses his path, Walden gives in to his baser instincts. He can indulge in the carnal pleasures this once and still be okay.

Their few hours together haunt Gilbert, the two-hundred-mile buffer from home no longer shutting out the past or the sexy man he left behind. Walden is just beginning to recover from the smoldering encounter with Gilbert when they are thrust together once more. This time, neither of them can walk away, no matter how hard they try. But when their pasts crash into each other as surely as the magnetism that pulls them together, walking away may be the only option.

The second book in the LavenderShores series was even better than the first one, maybe because it was hotter, maybe because the main characters were a little more damaged, exactly how I want my MCs to be. Maybe simply because the author is amazing at creating new people to love with excellent writing.

Gilbert and Walden are so made for each other it’s almost disgusting (in a good way!), the first with his “no commitment attitude”, the second with a huge heart broken to mend. The moment they meta magic happened, although they were both stupid enough to wait for who knows what and time passed till they decided to finally act on their feelings and be stupid together. And it wasn’t easy to me to wait for them, I was cheering on them but they took their times and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Finally they were together and their love was so sweet. Their stories caught my interest from the start, both of them had complex lives and it was beautiful to see them getting the deserved happy ever after.

The Garden can be read as a standalone book but I suggest you to read the series in order to better appreciate its couples and I am really dying to get the next installment in the series, which will be about Donovan Carlisle.